Leviathan
by pyrotorch246
Summary: My own interpretation of the pivotal moment in the original KOTOR. What happens when the crew of the Ebon Hawk are taken captive aboard the Sith Warship Leviathan?


Canderous had not exactly been enamored with the plan. The whole bit about standing next to an incendiary grenade with his healing implants temporarily disable in order to fake his own death had been unpleasantly painful. But when he awoke in the med bay of the _Leviathan_ with his burns fading into fresh scars, he saw the upside of the plan. After all, he was one half naked, wounded Mandalorian with nothing more than a combat knife up against the complement of a dreadnought grade Sith warship. They didn't stand a chance.

When he came the med bay was empty, which made his task that much easier. He padded around the room until he found the locker where they'd placed his clothes. The weapons had all been left on the _Ebon Hawk_ in the armory, but the knife he kept in his boots hadn't been removed. After he dressed, he unsheathed it and relished the moment—the Sith, he decided, had no idea what was about to hit them.

He remembered El's logic when she'd chosen him to break them out of the _Leviathan_'s brig. "Canderous can do it. He'll fake his own death then he can get to us afterwards." She'd turned to look him in the eyes. "Don't hold back. I'd much rather our prison break is met by a whole host of dead Sith than a bunch of live ones." A dangerous looking smile had spread across her face, and she added in mandalorian, "Have fun."

Canderous was going to. His first victims were a group of technicians right outside the med bay doors. He stabbed the first one through the heart from behind before the other two had noticed, and after that it was just a matter of knife work.

When he was finished, there was blood splashed across his arms and his clothing, but none of it was his. He continued working his way through the ship to one of the cell blocks, killing anyone in his path. It was fortunate, for the Sith at least, there weren't that many of them.

Much to his annoyance the first set of cells he reached contained nothing but a bunch of Rodians. He released them, hoping they'd cause more chaos for the Sith to handle, but they attacked him instead. That was a bit of a nasty fight for him, enough to make him glad for the healing implants. He'd had run-ins with crazed Rodians before, but he'd forgotten how dangerous they could be, and this time some of the blood was his own.

The next cell also contained a Rodian, but he seemed sane enough when he spoke to Canderous through the force field keeping him in. Canderous let him out as well and he ran off, but not before giving the Mandalorian a datapad with a nasty virus keyed to the _Leviathan_'s detention level as a thank you. It proved to be exactly what he needed, so went back the way he came towards the port side cellblocks.

The virus did it's job on the control consol in the center of the port cell blocks, and the doors around him sprang open, revealing the rest of the _Ebon Hawk_'s crew. Most of them had been lumped together in one large cell and left, but Eleanor, Carth, and Bastilla had been placed in individual force cages in a separate room. Force cages, Canderous saw, that had been fitted with fairly standard electrical torture devices, and it was clear that they'd used.

All three of them were naked inside their cells, and looked like they'd been through hell, but that was where the similarities ended. Bastilla and the pilot were standing, if only just, but El wasn't. She was sitting against the back post of the cage with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them while her head rested forward on her legs. She also looked like she'd been beaten, in addition to whatever had happened to the others, judging by the bruises that covered her.

Bastilla knelt down beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. Even from halfway across the room Canderous could see her flinch. "Canderous is here," The Jedi said, and her voice was far gentler than he had ever thought it could be. "It's time to go." She and Carth gently lifted El to her feet.

A quiet argument raged as they collected their clothing and whatever weapons they'd had on them when the Sith boarded their ship from storage room next to the cells. The point of contention was who would fight their way to the bridge to release the docking controls, and who would go straight back to the _Hawk_. Carth and Bastilla were going to the bridge, but the Jedi was insisting that El go with them.

Canderous finally interrupted. "Look, I don't have a problem with taking everybody back to the _Hawk_, but why do you need Eleanor? She can barely stand, dammit."

That provoked, of all things, a laugh from El, and a comment in mandalorian that made him snort and reply, "I'll make a proper Mandalorian of you yet."

"What did she say?" Carth asked. "I know a bit of mandalorian, but I didn't catch that."

"It's an old saying of ours, 'What doesn't kill you has made a tactical error.' But that doesn't answer my question, Bastilla."

The Jedi sighed. "She's the only stealth expert we have besides Mission, and I'm not taking Mission into a fight in the middle of a Sith command deck. We've all been tortured, Canderous, and we're in no condition to face them head on. We need to be able to slip around them, and El's the only one who can do that."

Eventually he consented to their arguments, but he still wasn't happy. He'd learned during the wars that you send the right people to do the job if you wanted to get it done properly, but it was hard sometimes. None of them were in any shape to do heavy fighting, but the two Jedi and the pilot did stand a better chance of surviving than anyone else, especially if, as Bastilla had pointed out, one of them as an expert in moving unseen, which would greatly improve the odds.

They parted ways at the lift. Canderous took the rest of the crew with him down to the hanger level, while El, Carth and Bastilla went up to the _Leviathan_'s command deck.

There was a pair of Sith soldiers standing guard at the entrance to the lift on the hangar deck, but when the doors opened they found themselves faced with an angry Mandalorian and a wookiee who hadn't been feed nearly enough in his cell. The Sith were dead before they had a chance to see the rest of the crew in the lift.

After they'd taken care of the first two guards Canderous commed te other group, letting them know that they hadn't run into anything they couldn't deal with. The deck they were on was a maze of narrow passageways leading to several different hangers, but they didn't run into anymore Sith until they reached the hanger containing the _Ebon Hawk_. Gicen that Malak was going to be arriving shortly Canderous wasn't surprised—everyone was either mustering for an honor guard, or getting as far away from Malak's path as they could.

The _Hawk_ itself as guarded by a full squad of soldiers, but they didn't provide much resistance. Canderous and the rest had all armed themselves with weapons from sight who'd gotten in their way, and between that and the combined powers of Jolee and Juhani it was a simple matter to surprise them and make sure that they went down quickly without a chance to sound an alarm.

After that it was a waiting game. Somewhere along the line Jolee had picked up a thing or two about spaceships and he went up to the cockpit to ready the _Hawk_ for a quick takeoff. Canderous went straight to the garage, donned his armor in less than a minute, grabbed his repeater, and walked back to the ramp. On his way he noticed HK-47 standing in the corner where he'd been deactivated before the Sith came onboard. He turned the droid back on and handed it a rifle so it could help him cover the hangar from the boarding ramp. If the Sith tried to retake the ship while he was guarding it, especially with the droid helping, they would be in for a nasty surprise.

A great deal of nothing happened for the next fifteen minutes. Several alarms went off and there was a repeated announcement calling security teams to the bridge, but he hangar stayed resolutely empty.

Without warning the doors opened, revealing Carth staggering under the weight of a nearly unconscious Eleanor. Bastilla was nowhere in sight.

Canderous didn't ask questions, he just acted. He ran out to the pilot and helped him support El on her way to the _Hawk_. Something seemed off about Carth, but it wasn't the right time to ask, so he let it lie. When they got to the ramp of the ship, Carth said, "Bastilla's not coming."

The Mandalorian nodded. "Then get to the cockpit. Send the old man back to the med bay, I'll meet him there." As the pilot ran off, he picked up El and carried her into the ship.

He didn't even notice when they started taking fire from fighters during their escape. Someone must have gotten onto the turret because he heard outgoing fire, but he was too busy helping Jolee keep El alive.

She'd barely been conscious when they'd rushed across the hanger, and now that she was unconscious in the _Hawk_'s meager med bay, he could see just how devastating the full extent of her injuries were.

Several blaster shots had gotten past her shields and winged her, adding several deep burns to her already impressive collection of bruises, broken ribs, and the lighter burns from the torture she'd endured. On top of that, much of her left arm had been scored open by a lightsaber blade—Canderous had seen many such wounds during the Mandalorian War, and he knew that one that large meant she'd only just dodged a powerfull blow.

Which begged another question in and of itself. Who had she been fighting that was strong enough to take her head on? Since her initial training on Dantooine, she'd grown tremendously in power until even Malak's best Sith were cautions about taking her on head to head.

He realized that it must have been Malak himself at about the same time that Jolee kicked him out of the room because he, "Couldn't do anything else to help." The old Jedi was using the force to heal her, but after taking care of the more superficial wounds, there was nothing left for Canderous to do.

He went to the cockpit instead, and sat down in the copilot's chair, watching the swirling stars for a while before turning to Carth. "It was Malak, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." Carth sounded broken, as though he'd faced something on the ship that had torn apart his fragile trust. "He was waiting for us at the bottom of the lift. El tried to hold him off, but she couldn't manage it. He's… He's terrifying, Canderous. Nothing but power and hatred, expressed as raw violence, as pure physical force. Bastilla stayed behind to slow him down, to give us a chance to finish this, but I now that I've faced Malak, I don't even know if we can."

"It was like that for us during the war, you know. Revan and Malak, along with that general, what was her name…" He trailed off for a moment, trying to remember, "Whatever. It's not important now. Whoever faced them died. It was a simple as that. In the end, not even Mandalore himself could stand up to that. We respected and admired them as warriors, but even we Mandalorians began to fell fear at the mention of their names towards the end of the war.

"But now we don't have a choice, pilot. He's in our way, and he will die, eventually. I don't know how, but if anyone can do it, it's El."

Carth sighed. "I suppose you're right." An errant thought made him laugh. "What do you think our peoples would say if they could see us now? The most famous ace in the republic fleet getting a pep talk from one of the war's most decorated Mandalorains."

Canderous smiled back at him. It was a hard edged smile, filled with the grim humor of a lifelong soldier. "I guess that means that nothing can stop the us. El's managed to collect the best she could find here on the _Hawk_, and we're finishing this, one way or another." It wasn't until later that he realized that the pilot had flinched slightly at El's name.

When Eleanor woke up, the first thing she did was call all of the crew together for a meeting. Canderous guessed that she'd wanted to hold it in the central room, but Jolee had put his foot down, and they were all gathered around the bed in the med bay.

She barely had the strength to stay conscious, much less talk, and Canderous found himself wondering just what was so important that the whole crew had to be told immediately, despite the fact that she'd been n the edge of death less than a day ago.

His question was answered when she dropped the verbal equivalent of an orbital bombardment on them. El, their Eleanor, who'd fought the Sith ruthlessly with every fiber of her being since waking up on the _Endar Spire_ was Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith! He had trouble believing it at first, but the more he though about it, the more it made sense. Her absolute, unflinching dedication to their cause, regardless of what she had to do to accomplish her goals, the way she bowed to cold pragmatism far more than the Jedi Council would have found appropriate and the ease with which she eliminated threats—all of those would have had to have been major traits of Revan's character before her fall.

But when she looked at him, the same way she'd looked at the rest of the crew, asking an unspoken question, he didn't let any of what he was thinking show. Instead, he told her the truth. "You defeated the Mandalore clans in the war, Revan. You were the only one in the galaxy who could best us. We had never met one like you before, and never since. How can you even ask if I will follow you? Whatever you are fighting, it will be worthy of my skill. I'm your man to the end, Revan, no matter how this plays out." One by one the rest of the crew affirmed their support for her, until Carth was left alone in his suspicion, and even then he was willing to work with her until the Sith were defeated.

A/N: While I'm taking a break from Convergence (read: Massive writer's block, but it's not dead yet, plus all that wonderful, time consuming college crap) I started playing KOTOR. Somehow, for nine years I missed out on this game. I'd played KOTOR 2 before, but I never got around to the first one.

I was shocked and amazed by how good it was, and my muse grabbed my by the throat and made me write my own interpretation of KOTOR's pivotal moment. I'm not sure why I choose Canderous as my viewpoint character, besides the fact that he's probably my favorite party member, but I think it worked out pretty well.

If it isn't clear by now, I've reworked the section a bit, so this is my personal take on it. When I write, things like being tortured have an effect on characters beyond, "That sucked, but it's time to move on". It's understandable as an RPG mechanic—you want your character to be a full health when you rampage through your enemy's lair, but it makes for bad (or worse, unjustifiable) storytelling. Most of the changes through this section arise from that.

Finally, I don't care what Bioware has said in The Old Republic. I prefer my Revan female, dammit, and I can write her any way I want to.

-PT246

Oh, and if you can find the source of the "What doesn't kill you" quote, or better yet, knew it beforehand, good on you.


End file.
